Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Defending their right to be asses

Fox News reports that a group of bikin-clad protestors is outside New York City's public transit HQ demanding an end to censorship in their bus media.

These concerned citizens are grieving the MTA's decision to remove an ad for Georgi Vodka from buses that travel through certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn that are primarily populated by Hasidic Jewish communities.

Apparently, the MTA had received a string of complaints about the ads from religious groups.

By this point, I'm sure you've figured out that this is all a cynical and opportunistic PR ploy. As Gothamist reports:

In response to the take-down, Silver fired up the PR machine and hired some models to wear the Georgi bikinis and hold signs that read: "MTA should butt out of bikini ads." This certainly isn't the first time Silver has dabbled in the fine art of publicity stunts—earlier this year he sent Sean "Diddy" Combs a toilet filled with Ciroc vodka.

At the scantily clad scene he created yesterday, Silver told the Daily News, "They hardly gave us any warning. They just took them off the buses. These ads are clearly not pornography... If you don't like what's on a bus, all you have to do is look away and walk past."

Definitely not pornography, and unless they're in violation of previously posted MTA standards, they probably should have stayed up. One group being offended on religious grounds hardly defines community standards in a cosmopolitan city. After all, despite being named as one of "The 10 Worst "Sexy" Vodka Ads" by BNET, the campaign is a lightweight when it comes to sexploitation.

But that doesn't make the Georgi spokesman less of a sexist ass:

“We’re very upset about the censorship,” Georgi Vodka spokesperson Todd Shapiro told Pop Tarts. “We had about 50 girls pointing their backsides at the MTA as part of the protest, basically telling them to ‘butt’ out.”